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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Bleached Tie-Dye Shorts

Bleach TIE-DYED Shorts!

What you will need:- A pair of jean shorts- A bottle of bleach- A "bleach bucket"- Rubber bands

Step OneFirst thing is first... There's no "right" way to do the rubber-banding. More than likely whatever you do will end up looking cool! So grab your rubber bands and start making little nubs all over the shorts. This is where you will get what I call the "tie-dye bursts".

This doesn't look particularly pretty but just make sure that the rubber bands are wrapped tightly. Over-all, including the back, I used about 17 rubber bands to make the nubs.

Step TwoNext thing you will need to do is use a few more rubber bands to compact the shorts into some sort of ball. There isn't a method to this. Just rubber band off big sections of the shorts.

I used 4 rubber bands to finish up the process.

Step ThreeNext you will make your bleach tie-dye solution, which is really simple:1 part bleach & 1 part waterThis is where you will also need your bleach bucket. I bought this big white tub at Five Below for $5. It comes in handy for a lot of different things so consider it a crafting investment!

Honestly, I just put some water in the bucket then dump the a whole thing of bleach in. When you're doing tie-dye you really only get one chance. So, that measuring cup is just there to set on top of the shorts to hold them under the solution but you can measure if you want.

I let them soak like this for about two hours. Occasionally, I would go in and swish them around a bit.

Step FourOnce you have the desired color (they will lighten when you wash them) take them out and rinse them off BEFORE taking the rubber bands off. You don't want bleach to run where you were trying to keep it from! After you have completely rinsed them you can start pulling off the rubber bands.

So, here are my shorts before I put them through the washer! I'm pleasantly surprised with how the turned out! Next, I put them through the washer TWICE. Bleach sticks around and it smells so I like to get it all out of the fabric before I attempt to wear them.